Naming resume for current date

In My Humble Opinion
1

How much does the filename matter when submitting a resume?

Now that it’s March, does having a resume called something like “purple resume Decmb 2017.doc” reduce my chances?

Would hiring managers use that as a filter to reduce an overcrowded candidate field, or as an indicator of how much attention the candidate pays to details?

Does creating a perception that a resume is “outdated” or that there’s been nothing new added in the last X days actuallu ping anyone’s radar in H.R. as a sign the candidate’s application can safely be ignored/flushed/rejected?

2

I don’t know if it’s likely to create problems but the odds that it might outweigh the minor bother of not changing the name of the file.

3

I’d say it’s a mild positive - it shows (if anyone is looking) that you are diligently updating your details.

Of course if you do that, it’s probably a good idea to never send one that is dated older than the current month.

4

In a lot of cases the resume will get renamed to something HR or the manager finds convenient anyway, so what you call it won’t matter. (Unless it is really wild.)
I can’t imagine anyone filtering on file name - content yes.
I post a floorplan for a conference exhibit hall which gets updated regularly. What I do is to have the versions named by date, and have another with a generic name I’ll upload, and when I get a change save as a new date and as the generic version.
If you do that, you only need to worry about the things you should be worrying about.
I don’t recall the file names of any of the resumes I’ve received, btw.

5

Speaking as someone who runs a business, name the resume for the prospective employer. This shows that it is a resume targeted for that position, and not a generic resume.

6

I always name my resumes LastnameXXnnnNN, where Lastname is the first word of my lastname, XX is the language (EN or ES), nnn is the month and NN the year. That way the people receiving it know it’s current, if they’ve asked for versions in both languages they can tell them apart easily, and when I’m looking for one to update and send I can tell if it’s going to be a ton of work or a little just by looking at the name.

I can’t target for the employer since it’s not an employer: it’s an agency and later a client. Removing personal details before submitting my resume to the prospective clients is part of the agents’ job; keeping copies when they move is part of what they’re not supposed to do cough cough.

7

Consider that most of the resumes they receive are probably just named resume.pdf , so the original filename can’t be used to distinguish between them. Also consider that when you’re uploading documents on an application, there’s usually a drop-down box to specify what kind of document you’re uploading (resume, letters of reference, etc.). My guess would be that, on the back end, each applicant gets a folder containing files named things like resume , reference1 , and so on, according to what you identified them as in the drop-down, with the original name being completely lost.

At least, that would be the case for the automatic online applications. For “E-mail your resume and letter of interest to hr@companyname.com”, someone will have to sit down at a computer and save all of your attachments. There, the filename might matter, but I’d imagine that the most important thing would be to put your name in the filename, so purple_resume.pdf doesn’t get mixed up with chronos_resume.pdf .

8

This is a good tip. But then how does the hiring manager handle multiple files all named harrysmeatpackingco.pdf?

9

YourName_HarrysMeatPacking

10

All of this makes me think of one thing:

“Begging for a job is more humiliating than begging for food.” – B. Traven

This is even more true than it was when he wrote it a hundred years ago… He didn’t have to deal with H. R. directors with masters degrees looking down their noses at him.

11

I thought the only dates that matter are the employment dates.

Does anybody care when a resume was last updated, as long as it’s accurate and, well, up to date?

I suspect that by the time a resume gets to a hiring manager, the filename is just about the last thing you need to worry about.

12

Just don’t submit a file named resume.doc or resume.pdf. It’s annoying when we have to rename your file so we can quickly identify it as yours, and indicates to me that you don’t know a lot about how to be a good citizen while working in a shared environment.

13

But I don’t work in your environment (yet!) so it’s tough to guess if a detail like a filename is problematic, as in your example, or irrelevant, if for ex. the applicant software programmatically updates filenames, as suggested upthread.

I could guess wrong and work against your tech details, too. If a hiring manager uses crappy software that can’t handle special characters in document titles, or has a character limit … and I submit “purplehorseshoe_joesmeatpacking_mar2018.doc” because I’m trying to hit all the points mentioned so far … well, now I’ve shot myself in the foot anyway.